


come, i'm calling, come

by maharlika



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Berserker Thor (Marvel), Bottom Thor, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Canon-Typical Violence, Cuddling & Snuggling, Edging, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Light Bondage, Loki (Marvel) Lives, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sensory Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-15 09:01:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21250826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharlika/pseuds/maharlika
Summary: For the second time in his life, Loki is plucked from the void of space.Waking up after five years of drifting is a jarring, daunting experience. But Loki has no time to lose, not when he hears that Thor has been on a rampage through the universe, mercilessly killing off anyone associated with Thanos and anyone who stands in his way.Can Loki get through to his brother before he loses himself completely?An Avengers: Endgame fix-it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caffein8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caffein8/gifts).

> This was inspired by an idea from @softhorki on Twitter re: nomad!Thor. I've since deviated from the original tweet but I hope you like this fic anyway, Kels!

Things hadn’t been the same since the fall of Sakaar.

Although—Rav’a supposed it hadn’t been a fall so much as a flip. An inversion of power structures, and one that was bound to happen, as the wheel of life slowly turned. This was what the Goddess foretold, and not even the Grandmaster was spared.

Rav’a understood this, the way he understood that someday someone would come and switch things up again. But in the meantime, Sakaar’s scrapyards had been closed off—rehabilitation efforts, the new government said. And so power shifted hands, but here was Rav’a, still at the bottom of the heap. His dam had told him to find a proper job but he’d been a scrapper all his life and liked to keep his feet on the ground, preferably wading through a galaxy’s worth of trash.

There was plenty of trash in space, but it was unsettling to be surrounded, on all sides and through most of their days, by a darkness that was broken up only by the glimmer of faraway stars.

Most space junk was nothing interesting—scrap metal, personal items, sometimes an energy core or two. They came upon dead bodies more often than most people would expect, usually in the debris of broken ships, floating in space. Burned to a crisp if they were close to a star. Otherwise, frozen solid.

It wasn’t clean work, but it was—well, it wasn’t entirely honest either. But it was work.

The ship’s comms crackled to life and Rav’a turned towards the ship’s hatch, checking to see that he was fully-secured. That was the problem with space—one mistake and you would be dead before you could take a deep breath. And with the way this crew liked to cut corners, Rav’a had to watch his own back.

“You ready to go?” Niya said, through static.

“Ready.”

They had been drifting into piles of debris for the past few hours, getting closer to the center of what promised to be an interesting mess.

Still just another routine pick-up, Rav’a guessed. He’d stopped wondering about the events surrounding these disasters a while ago. Things broke, people died. That was the way of it.

“Careful out there. It doesn’t look good.”

“Got it,” Rav’a said. He bounced on his toes. Despite the eerie darkness of space, being out there gave him a high that not even the most outrageous Sakaarian leaf could rival. It was one of the reasons he stayed.

“Looks like...oh goddess. It’s...it’s a mess out there, Rav. Remember that accident off Catania?”

Rav’a remembered. Two ships had hyper-jumped to the same spot at the same time, materializing _inside _each other. The whole thing had been an unfortunate mess. 

He and the rest of the crew had eaten well, the day they found that wreck. 

“Seen disasters before, Niya. Let me out.”

“Brace yourself,” Niya said, blunt.

The hatch opened, and Rav’a let himself drift through the open door, breathing deeply inside his suit.

His eyes widened, and he cursed under his breath as he got a good look outside. 

This was no accident.

This was a massacre.

They had found a graveyard.

\--

For the second time in his life, Loki was plucked from the void of space.

If he had grown up in Jotunheim, he would have known how his body could strip itself down to the barest essentials, enabling him to enter a state of torpor. Estivation, dormancy, his cells quieting down their mechanisms and keeping him in stasis until the environment was safe for life again.

Seeds could stay dormant for a thousand years, waiting for the right conditions: a ray of sunlight, a drop of water. Jotnar hibernated regularly. It was not unheard of for a Jotun to wake up five, ten years later, to a world much unchanged. Still frozen, still cold.

When Loki’s body was taken from space and brought into a ship to be divested of his worldly belongings—and perhaps his organs—he was awash in oxygen for the first time in five years.

On the cold, hard medical table, Loki drew a breath, and opened his eyes. The too-bright lights of the ship flickered, and Loki was very aware of everything, suddenly. Of how he was too cold and too warm at the same time. Of how parched he was, his aching throat—gods, he had a throat, and limbs, and fingers. He had a rapidly beating heart, newly-restarted, desperately pumping.

“Fuck, Rav, he’s alive.”

The man who stood before him was draped in tattered clothes, his face painted in a pattern that was strangely familiar.

Before Loki could move, the cold muzzle of a blaster was placed on his forehead.

“Hardy thing, aren’t you?”

Loki’s eyes moved furiously across the room, taking everything in. His chest began to heave.

“Now, my baffling, blue friend, I have one question. Are you fighter, or are you food?”

After a period of dormancy, a seed or cell could grow rapidly, exponentially.

Loki’s lungs swelled with oxygen. His limbs twitched, then moved, lightning fast, pushing the gun off of him, slamming his captor into the wall.

In an instant, he had the man’s throat under his knife.

Loki remembered, vaguely, the way his throat had collapsed under the Mad Titan’s grip.

A seed continued to live for the promise of rain. A Jotun, for the promise of spring.

Though Loki’s mind had slept on for these five years, his heart continued to beat, slow, so very slow, but steady. In the depths of himself, Loki continued to live for the promise of one thing.

He had not spoken in five years.

But there were words clamoring behind his teeth, burning his throat.

Loki spoke, because it was impossible not to.

“Where...is...my...brother?”


	2. Chapter 2

“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to need Thor.”

Natasha didn’t look up from where she was studying the schematics of Tony’s machine—the one he claimed could send them traveling through time. It was absurd, but no part of the past five years had been any less strange. Or difficult to believe. 

“Nope,” she said, her eyes raking over formulae. Numbers and theories that made no sense to her. But she kept trying. God, how she’d kept trying, all these years, to make things make sense. To keep going, when her world threatened to collapse around her.

“No?” Steve asked.

“He’s too far gone,” Nebula said. She crossed her arms.

“What’s the big guy been up to?” Tony asked, eyebrows raised. “Someone’s gotta bring me up to speed. I’ve been too busy having a life and being a good father.”

“Oh, you know,” Natasha said. “Murder.”

“Oh,” Tony said. “Doesn’t sound like him.”

“We’ve been trying to keep an eye on him. From _ afar _. He’s been killing off people associated with Thanos.”

“Sounds like a good thing,” Tony said.

“He doesn’t always get ‘em right,” Rhodey said. “And he doesn’t care about collateral damage.”

“It’s hard enough trying to keep the universe together without a power-mad god trying to level whole cities,” Carol said. “And that axe of his makes it hard to get ahold of him.”

“So, the answer is nope,” Natasha said. “We have to do this without him.”

“It’s gonna be tough,” Steve said. “Thor could have vital information about the Infinity Stones. And he’s the only one who’s gotten enough to land a good hit on Thanos. We’re gonna need him if we ever see Thanos again.”

“Someone’s gotta try and get through to him,” Bruce said. 

“I’d like to see anyone try,” Natasha said, sighing. They didn’t understand. Hadn’t seen the destruction Thor had wrought across the universe. Whole towns, scorched to the earth. Cities, drowned. Wherever Thor went, he brought with him the uncontainable power of a god in mourning. 

And he’d been at it for the past five years. 

“Okay, so we’re gonna have to—” Tony started.

There was a flash outside, a ship passing by in light speed.

They waited for a moment, but nothing happened.

“Okay, so—” Tony started again. 

An alarm started wailing. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Tony groaned. “What’s going on, Friday?”

Tony waved a hand and a number of screens in the room lit up, showing an alien being—humanoid, about as tall as an average Caucasian male—exiting an old, beat-up ship that had landed on the lawn outside. 

The creature was a deep blue. When it looked up, with eerie precision, into one of the outdoor cameras, they saw that its eyes were red.

“Hostile detected on the premises, boss. It’s...one Loki Odinson.”

\--

“ANOTHER!” 

Lusu hid at the edge of the crowd, her hood tucked neatly over her head, her knives sheathed into her belt, her boots, the small of her back. Water sluiced down into her shoes. She squelched her toes into it. The feeling was wholly new to her. 

The wind howled. Isade, the parched, barren rock that Lusu called home, hadn’t seen water fall from the sky in the past century.

Not until today.

Thor Odinson raised his axe and cleaved his enemy through, spilling guts and blood across the wet sand. 

“Another!” Thor roared. 

The crowd gathered in a circle around him tittered nervously. Thor had brutalized the first two dozen warriors who had come running at him. 

Within the next fifteen kliks, he decimated the rest of the crowd. 

Lusu neatly stepped over to where Thor was holding a man at eye level, gripping him by the head with one massive hand. 

“I don’t fight children,” Thor said, tossing the man away flippantly.   
  
“I am no child,” Lusu hissed. 

Whatever life there was to be had on Isade was eked out on the margins, and the past five years had been no less harsh. Children had no place here, not since the Snap had wiped out half the universe. Lusu’s brother had taken on whatever job he could find—even if it meant working for cruel, terrible men. Men that Thor had cut down as easily as he swung his axe. 

“Are you a god?” Lusu asked, as Thor stared her down. 

“I was, once,” Thor said. He sheathed his axe to his back, and began to turn away.

It had been seventeen days since Sylan was murdered at the hands of Thor, the Unworthy. 

If there was justice in the world, Thor Odinson would die with her knife in his chest.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony Stark landed with a quiet whir, light shining out of his extended, armored hands. 

“Lookin’ kinda blue, Loki,” Tony said. 

Loki’s eyes widened, as if he hadn’t realized what he looked like until Tony pointed it out. With a wave of his hand, the blue washed away from his skin. 

In an instant, he looked like the murderous, genocidal god that Tony remembered him to be. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” Tony said. “If I wasn’t so sure you’d been dead when the world ended, I would have sworn you’d had something to do with it.”

Natasha, Steve, Bruce, Carol, Nebula and Rhodey all stepped into tactical positions, surrounding the fugitive god. 

Loki’s eyes roved dispassionately over them, dismissing each one in turn, growing visibly agitated.

“Look, Reindeer games, I don’t know—”

“Where is my brother?” Loki said. His voice was mangled, as if his throat had been put through a shredder. As Tony took a closer look, he realized that Loki looked like he was barely holding himself together. Sweat was beading on his face, and he looked grimy with more than just dirt. He looked like a dead man walking. Tony knew what those looked like—he’d seen it enough times in the mirror. 

Tony took a step forward and Loki flinched back, holding a hand to his chest and coughing, hard. 

“Where is Thor?” he rasped, voice almost frantic. “Where is he? Did Thanos—”

“He’s alive,” Natasha said.

Loki’s eyes, blown wide, narrowed as he took her in. 

“Alive,” he whispered. 

“As in, not dead,” Tony said.

Loki’s eyes flickered to him. His lip curled. Then, he turned around.

“Where are you going?” Steve asked.

“I will find him,” Loki said.

“We already know where he is,” Natasha said.

Loki stopped in his tracks, his whole body going rigid.

“Maybe we can work out a deal, Reindeer games,” Tony said. 

“I don’t deal with mortals,” Loki hissed.

“Then don’t,” Tony said. “You can spend the next few months trying to look for Thor while he goes and murders more people.”

At that, Loki bristled. He swung around, his hands aglow with a cloying green energy, his teeth bared. Blue began to creep down his hairline and fingertips, edging into his skin. 

“Do not lie to me, ” Loki growled.

“If you don’t want to believe me, then don’t,” Tony said. “But we know where he is. So if you’re looking for him, we’re your best bet.”

Loki twitched, eyes jumping from person to person like a cornered animal. 

“Fine,” Loki spat, grimacing. “Take me to him.”

“Sure thing,” Tony said. 

“But I don’t promise you’ll like what you find.”

\--

The rain was so heavy and so loud that Lusu could barely see past her own nose to glare at Thor Odinson. His long, storm-drenched hair obscured his face: she could only see the grim line of his mouth, the lightning-bright glow of his soulless eyes. 

It was no use—he had her by the throat, holding her above the ground, his fingers tightening around her neck in increments. 

Lusu tried, valiantly, to kick at him, but if her blows landed, they only glanced off him. She hadn’t even been able to scratch him. Pathetic. 

She was going to die here, half-blinded by tears and by rain, the breath choked out of her. 

Death at the hands of a god she did not even believe in. 

“Wait for me,” she gasped, eyes going up towards the heavens. “Brother.” It always came back to Sylan. After the death of their family, she had lived only for him. And now, she would die for him.

At her words, thunder pealed from the sky. From afar, she heard a rumble of sound. 

Drumbeats...like some sort of unfamiliar music. 

“Hey, big guy,” said a voice, reverberating all around them, sounding strange in the storm. “That’s not a great look.”

Lusu began to struggle again as Thor bared his teeth. 

“Stark,” he said, his voice a growl. “I have no interest in talking to you.”

“Yeah, not to me,” said the man in metal, “but I think you’ll wanna talk to  _ him _ .”

Two things happened at the same time: 

Thor’s hand on her neck slackened, as if in shock.

A red and gold blur slammed into her, and Lusu found herself hacking and gasping for air, enclosed in a metallic embrace. 

“What do you say we get outta here, kid? Don’t wanna be caught in the middle of this one,” the man said to her.

“Not...a...kid,” Lusu rasped.

“‘Course not,” came the quick reply, and then they were flying up.

Before Thor Odinson disappeared from sight, Lusu saw another man emerging through a clear path through the rain. The water seemed not to touch him, radiating away from his body. 

The last word Lusu heard before she passed out was a cry, high and desperate: “Brother!”


	4. Chapter 4

For a moment, Loki could not understand what he was seeing.

When it finally registered—when his mind allowed him to accept the gruesome scene before him—he felt the overwhelming urge to throw up. 

His head spun, and one hand, trembling, flew to his throat. He fought to take a breath, then another. 

This was Thor, he told himself. Not Thanos. Not a monster. This man was his brother. 

“Brother!” he called out, and fought not to wince. His voice sounded weak, even to himself. 

When Thor turned to face him, the force of Loki’s relief overshadowed everything else. He lost grip of his seidr, and lost his footing as rain slammed into him. As he stumbled sideways, the rain began to peter out, muting down into a drizzle. 

“You...you’re not…” 

“Brother,” Loki said again, voice barely a whisper. 

Thor’s eyes lost their eerie glow, and the lightning crackling across his skin dissipated. From this distance, Loki could not tell whether Thor weeping, or if it was the rain.

“Thor,” Loki said. “Stop this. This isn’t you. You’re not—whatever this is.”

“Loki…” Thor whispered. He took one trembling step forward, but his knees buckled before he could come any closer. He fell to the mud, and didn’t move. His arms hung limp at his sides, his head down, his back bowed and his shoulders slumped, as if he was carrying an impossible weight. 

“Come home,” Loki said, pleading. 

“Home?”

Loki gasped as the rain started to pick up again. He raised his arms to shield his face, but he was being buffeted on all sides, lashed by the merciless downpour. It was all he could do to stay standing. 

“No. I have no home. I have no brother. You are not real. You cannot hurt me.”

“Thor!”

Quick as a flash of lightning, Thor covered the distance between them.

His fist collided with Loki’s stomach as the rain hit him like a waterfall. 

Loki dodged the next swing, and the next, blocking Thor’s attacks like clockwork. He was exhausted, but a millennium of training and fighting had been ingrained in him. His body moved without thought.

It was almost comforting, fighting with Thor like this, like they were sparring in the training yards of Idavollr. 

Except Idavollr was gone, and Thor moved with murderous intent.

Loki swung to the side, dodging a blow to his face and sending a burst of seidr to shield him, but Thor shattered the barrier with brute force, sending Loki flying across the field. 

He caught himself with a hand on the ground and flipped upright, right as Thor’s axe came flying towards him.

Loki inhaled sharply. Desperately, tore a hole into the fabric of the universe and swiftly stepped sideways into it. The axe flew past him, taking a chunk of his hair with it. 

Then it reversed its course, flying back into Thor’s hand.

Loki slumped over, trying to breathe through burning lungs. 

Like this, he was in between, not quite here but not quite _ not _here. It was where Loki felt seidr most keenly: in the space between the truth and the lie, where one thing could so easily tip into the other. 

He took a moment to gather his bearings. He could not fight from here, nor could he truly rest, but he could catch his breath, if only for a moment. It was dangerous to get caught in the liminal spaces of the universe. Difficult to find your way back if you ventured too far. Loki tugged on a strand of his hair, knotting it to mark his place, and tried to think. 

Something brushed against his leg as he tried to shake himself loose of the nerves that gripped him. Thor was angry. Incandescently, inescapably so. Loki could not help it: he was frightened. But he bent down and examined what was touching him.

It was a leaf. 

Deep underneath Isade’s parched bedrock, bright, restless things were beginning to stir, woken up by the onslaught of Thor’s rain. 

Curious.

Loki tucked that knowledge into a corner of his mind, wrung out his hands to dispel his nerves, and stepped outside.

Lightning streaked through the sky.

Thor turned to him as he appeared, seemingly out of thin air.

In the blink of an eye, there were a hundred Loki’s all around them. 

Thor stood stock-still in the middle of the crowd.

“More illusions,” Thor sneered. 

“I assure you, brother, I’m very real,” Loki said. All at once, the hundred Loki’s rushed towards Thor, who swatted them away like flies. But they fell upon him relentlessly, wave upon wave upon wave.

Loki fought, tooth and nail and claw, standing his ground even has he felt himself being torn apart, over and over again. 

But Thor could not be conquered.

“Enough!” Thor roared, throwing off his brother’s clones, tearing them off of him like they were made of paper. 

Loki looked up as the sky began to darken rapidly. The smell of ozone and smoke began to thicken in the air. 

“Stark,” Loki said urgently, hoping his comms were still working, “I hope you are all very far away. If you are not...then run.”

Then the lightning began to crash into the ground: as heavy and as inescapable as the rain. 

Anyone looking at the battlefield from the outside would have seen only light, and fire, and smoke. 

It went on for a long time. 

When it all cleared, Loki was kneeling on the ground. His clothes sizzled and smoked in the rain. 

Before he could stand up, Thor’s leg caught him on the side, sending him sprawling. 

The blade of Thor’s axe nudged against his chin.

“Brother…” 

“_My brother is dead,” _Thor said. “You are an illusion, a wraith, a draugr—”

“I am Loki. I am your brother.” Loki put his hands on the blade of Thor’s axe and shoved, hard, even as the metal dug into his skin, wounding him. Blood trickled down his wrists, his arms.

“I bleed,” Loki whispered. “I am in pain. For five years, I froze in space. All of these were nothing compared to the pain of waking up and not knowing if you were alive.”

Loki let his torn hands fall to his side, and bared his neck for Thor.

“Kill me if you must. If it will bring you peace. Only cease this madness, Thor. These people do not deserve your ire.”

“Die, then,” Thor growled. He raised his axe. 

Loki kept his eyes open. He’d made a mistake last time, keeping his eyes on Thanos as he died. 

Not this time. If Loki was to die, he wanted his last memory to be Thor. 

There was a thud next to his head, and Thor’s axe cleaved into the ground, missing him by a hair’s breadth.

Loki took a shallow breath, and then another, and another. 

Thor screamed as he threw himself at Loki. His fist slammed into Loki’s cheek, snapping Loki’s face into the mud. 

“Damn you,” Thor sobbed, punching Loki again. “Damn you.” And again. “Damn you.” And again.

“Thor…” Loki whispered. He lifted his arms to shield himself from Thor’s blows. 

Nothing fell upon him but drops of water. Salty. Not rain. 

Atop him, Thor was weeping, clutching his head in his hands. “What manner of creature are you, to wound me so? My heart trembles at the sight of you, the air stolen from my lungs...”

“I’m your brother,” Loki whispered. “Don’t you remember me? Remember when we were children, and I turned into a snake so you could pick me up? Remember how I have hurt you, and you have hurt me, and how we found each other again?”

Shaking, Loki reached out to touch him. 

Thor flinched as he raised his hands, cowering like a wounded animal.

Loki put his bloody hands on Thor’s face, streaking his skin red, and said, again: “It's me, Thor. Your Loki.”

At his words, Thor let out a scream so guttural, so pained, that it felt like a knife plunged into Loki’s gut. 

“Loki,” he choked, “Oh gods, oh gods, brother, what have I done, oh gods, Loki…”

Thor’s arms closed around him like a vice, but Loki made no move to loosen the embrace. Instead, he pushed himself as close as he could get, scrambling just as desperately. 

Loki drew Thor’s face to his, and kissed him. 

“No,” Thor whispered, pulling away after a moment. "No, gods, Loki. My shame festers inside me like a parasite that cannot be excised. I am not worthy.”

“You will _ not _ deny me this,” Loki hissed. “Worthy or not. I don’t give a damn, Thor.”

“Loki—”

"_Five years_, brother,” Loki said. “Kiss me, now.”

“You know I cannot deny you,” Thor whispered, almost exasperated.

“You cannot. So do not,” Loki said. 

Thor kissed him.

Eventually, after a long while, and after a few false endings, they stopped kissing. It took them longer to stand up, but that, too, was eventually achieved. And then there was to be walking, and talking, and eventually wrongs would have to be righted, and wounds to be healed—but for now, there was kissing _ while _ standing. And so on.

In the middle of all this, Loki, tired of the mud, willed the rain away, and called for the sun to set the field awash with its radiance. Wrapped in Thor’s embrace, it was easy to reach into his seidr, so raw it was, so vulnerable, a gaping wound in Thor’s chest. Loki handled it with far more care than he had ever handled anything in his centuries-long life. 

The rain stopped.

And Thor, who had lived in the dark storm of his own grief for so long, raised his head to the light.

\--

“You think we should go...check out what’s going on?” Tony asked.

They sat inside the hull of the ship Loki had brought down to them the night before. Almost all the scrappers had escaped when Loki commandeered the ship, but Rav’a had paid good money for the old lump of metal and would stay with her until she was returned to him. 

In any case, these Avengers didn’t seem so bad. Rav’a had been playing cards with them for the past hour. Natasha was especially good, and he’d had lost all of his bottle caps to her. Only she and Niya seemed to be having fun. 

The girl that they’d brought with them was resting under one of Rav’a’s cloaks, fast asleep.

“Loki can handle himself,” Bruce said, but his tone was uncertain. 

“Guys…” Steve started.

“Or we sent him to die there. Who knows if Thor can even recognize him in his state…” Bruce continued. 

“He did seem pretty fucked up,” Tony said. 

“Guys,” Steve said.

“Look, I didn’t ask to be part of this. Two Norse gods battling it out? I’m not getting anywhere near that.”

“Guys!” 

“_What_, Rogers?” Tony asked.

“Listen,” Steve said, pointing to the ceiling of the ship. All gathered turned their heads to the ceiling, wondering what they were listening for.

Slowly, it dawned upon them.

It had stopped raining.


	5. Chapter 5

Thor awoke to moonlight. 

It was disorienting, being horizontal. He could not remember the last time he had slept, much less in a bed. 

He moved his arm—or tried to. Something was holding him down. 

Before panic could spike in Thor’s chest, Loki turned in his sleep, tucking himself closer to Thor’s side. His breath brushed against Thor’s neck. 

Thor drew in a deep, aching breath. 

The arm that Loki was lying on twitched, and then Thor slowly, hesitantly, touched his brother. Swept his hand down Loki’s back. Moved up, touching that slender neck, and then higher still, to brush the shorn ends of Loki’s hair. 

Shorn by Thor’s axe. 

Thor closed his eyes, trying to keep his breathing in check. He did not quite sob—it was a near thing—but the tears could not be helped.

Beside him, Loki was waking. Pressed this close together, Thor could feel the way he stiffened, his body retreating from the bare openness of slumber. 

“I hurt you,” Thor whispered.

“I know,” Loki said. “I know.”

Loki’s hand moved down Thor’s chest over his linen shirt. Down to his side. Pressed into the wound from a dagger, years ago. There was no scar, but they both knew, intimately, how the body remembered all the ways they had harmed each other through the years. 

“You bared your neck for me,” Thor said, voice rough. He dared not turn to look at Loki. It was terrible enough to have him in his arms, in his bed. Thor deserved none of it. If he was a less selfish man, he would have left as soon as he’d woken. 

If there was anything the last five years had proven, it was that Thor’s selfishness knew no bounds. 

“It worked, didn’t it?” Loki said lightly. 

Thor breathed in, breathed out.

“Why are you still here?” Thor asked.

“Where would I go?” said Loki, simply.

Breathe in. Breathe out. The air stuttered in his chest. His throat grew thick.

“Sleep, beloved,” Loki said, pressing a swift kiss to Thor’s jaw to underline the sentiment.

“I’ll be here when you wake.”

\--

“Set it down lightly—lightly!” 

Thor, the god of thunder, huffed as he set down the crate of potatoes as gently as he could. Still, it creaked and heaved ominously, filled to the brim with produce. Produce that Lusu would be taking to market tomorrow, as Isade’s dusty prairies began to fill with vibrant, growing things. 

Lusu walked over to where Loki was making an inventory, marking things off on a clipboard. 

“...should have enough to last through the winter, but if the rain doesn’t come back by spring, give us a call,” Loki said, looking things over. He handed the clipboard to Lusu. 

“You should be all right, though, for a while.”

“I think we will be,” Lusu said. “You sure you don’t want to stay awhile though?” 

Loki shook his head. “Your home wasn’t...it wasn’t the only one Thor visited.”

“He’s dead set on puttings things to rights, isn’t he?” Lusu said. “Even if it means getting on his knees and begging for forgiveness from every single person he’s hurt.”

And Thor  _ had _ done that, was the thing. It had made Lusu deeply uncomfortable. She preferred him when he was harvesting her potatoes and making it rain for the children. 

“Yes, well, that’s how he is,” Loki said. The fondness in his tone was unmistakable. Lusu knew what it meant without even asking. Knew, actually, that it was better not to ask. 

She busied herself with her inventory as Thor walked over to them, wiping the dust from his brow. Loki licked a finger and rubbed it across his brother’s cheek. 

They seemed to have sorted themselves out just fine. 

\--

“...three thousand, four thousand. Five thousand. Five thousand solars,” Rav’a counted. He gave a two-finger salute. “All accounted for.”

The sun was beginning to set into the sea across the cliffs of New Asgard. Rav’a had spent the last six months steadily picking bodies from space and bringing them back home. He usually didn’t stay around for the funeral, but once or twice, as he’d gotten back on the ship, he caught a glimpse of starlight, flowing into the sky. 

“Word’s travelling around the galaxy,” Thor said, a faraway look in his eyes as he watched the Asgardians carried their dead down from Rav’a’s ship. “I hear Sakaar’s opening its trash heaps again.”

Rav’a shrugged. “Heard the same story.”

“You ever think of heading back home?” 

“‘s’not the same,” Rav’a said. “‘s’never gonna be the same. Don’t even know if it’s home anymore.”

“I suppose you’d know best,” Thor said. 

Rav’a nodded. The last body had been carried off, he’d been paid, and it was time to head out. No point in wearing out his welcome. 

“Thank you,” Thor said. “I don’t think I ever said that. For bringing him back.”

“Wasn’t an act of charity, I can tell you that,” Rav’a said. 

“Thank you all the same,” Thor said. 

Rav’a nodded. “Pleasure doing business with you, Odinson. Call if you need a scrapper.”

“Already got one of my own,” Thor said, “but I’ll keep it in mind.”

Rav’a nodded, and climbed back up the ramp.

The doors shut behind him. 

“Ready, Rav?” Niya said, voice crackling. They really needed to get that comms system fixed.

“Always am, Niya. Heave ho!”

In the end, bodies were bodies and money was money. As long as Rav’a stayed in space, he hoped to come into an abundance of both. But maybe there was a part of him that wanted to find something more. 

Rav’a set his sights forward. His ship rocked as it exited the atmosphere, making for a bumpy ride.

The rusted old lady was beginning to feel like home. 


	6. Chapter 6

Thor did not hear when Loki entered the room. Lying on his stomach on the bed, his legs spread apart and kept open, his ass in the air, and his cock dripping into the sheets, Thor could barely comprehend anything past the slow, dizzying swell of pleasure inside him. 

Loki had pulled out all the stops: the gag, the blindfold, the silencing spell. The pretty silk ropes that bound Thor’s arms behind his back. Red and silver, Thor’s colors. Loki had had them woven just for him, gifted last Jol. Loki had bound him gently, lovingly, kissing Thor’s wrists, his palms, his fingers.

And then he had _ left_, and Thor did not know how long it had been. Time moved strangely when he was like this, but his mind was blessedly silent. No guilt, no grief. Just the steady ache in his muscles from keeping his position.

Thor shifted his head to find a better position, breathing through his nose. 

The trick of it was to keep breathing. To keep breathing and to—

“_Nngggh—!! _” 

Loki breathed a laugh against Thor’s skin, the point of his wicked tongue tracing circles around the rim of his ass, still open and wet from when Loki had fucked him with his fingers earlier. 

And then he was gone, no noise or movement to mark the action.

Thor squeezed his eyes shut, shuddering, teeth clenching into the gag.

It was the absence of words, of sound, of sight, of any touch besides constant, barely-there brush of linen against his skin, that drove him into a frenzy. Every sensation was amplified to a degree that had Thor both craving and cowering. 

The anticipation built, and built, making him feel weightless, drifting, untethered. So when Loki touched him—whenever he deigned to—Thor was brought down, heavily, into the present. Where he was bound and gagged and spread open like a common whore.

The next time Loki touched him, it was to brush his fingers, feather-light, along Thor’s fat, dripping cock. Thor trembled with the effort of keeping himself still as Loki amused himself, dragging calloused fingers up and down and up and down the line of Thor’s cock, tapping, stroking, teasing, like he was playing an instrument. Loki had played the lute, when they were young men.

Now he played Thor, and with greater skill. With greater enjoyment, Thor hoped.

Then Loki disappeared again, with no indication.

Thor, on the edge of orgasm, whined into the gag, his toes clenching. It was getting more and more difficult to stay in his position, but he wanted—he wanted to be _ good _ for Loki. He had failed in numerous horrible ways throughout the years, but in this, at least, he could be good. 

He wanted it, so, so badly.

So he held himself still. Didn’t rut into the sheets like he desperately wanted to, blinking back tears from his desperation, ignoring his aching muscles. He would take anything at this point, any form of touch, even the vicious sting of the crop. 

He waited, his ass clenching around nothing, his toes curling. Waited as he drooled onto the sheets helplessly, his cock twitching. He waited, and waited, and still Loki did not come. 

He waited until doubt began to sow its bitter seeds: what if Loki did not come at all?

What if he’d been hurt, or if there was an attack on the settlement, if he’d been needed urgently and perhaps so was Thor? 

What if he had, simply, forgotten that Thor was here?

The slow, unmistakable slide of Loki’s cock into his ass dispelled all those fears. Dispelled every other thought in his head.

Thor groaned, eyelids fluttering, his eyes rolling backwards as his ass was stuffed full of cock. 

His body came to life, electricity sparking along his skin as every part of him lit up with pleasure.

_ Gods_, it felt good. 

Here was the trick of it: Thor could free himself easily. No rope, no seidr could keep Thor Odinson bound when he did not want to be. 

It was more difficult, by far, to force himself to submit, than to be forced to submit. 

His desire to be bound warred against his strength. 

His desire for humiliation warred against his pride. 

Here, Thor fought against himself. 

Here, Thor submitted not to Loki, but to himself. 

Though Loki certainly helped—his cock was an excellent motivator.

Thor’s breathed, rough and heavy, as Loki fucked him in smooth, knowing thrusts that filled and satisfied Thor better than anything he’d ever felt. 

Loki’s hands fitted themselves around Thor’s waist, soft and fat after the years he’d spent not taking care of himself. 

Thor made himself stay limp and pliant as Loki rearranged them, sitting Thor on his cock as he sat down on the bed, hooking Thor’s knees under his arms and spreading him open. 

Thor moaned, head lolling back against Loki’s shoulder as the angle drove Loki’s cock deeper into him, gravity forcing his body to open up further. He wiggled his hips and clenched, and Loki rewarded him by reaching around and toying with Thor’s nipples. 

“_Mmh_, _ mmh_,” Thor whimpered, trying to fuck himself on Loki’s cock and press into his hands at the same time. 

“Shh,” Loki whispered, making Thor jolt. The silencing spell was still in effect—Thor could hear nothing beyond Loki’s voice echoing inside his head, intimately close.

“Enjoying yourself, pet?”

Thor keened, a sound that would have embarrassed him had he not been far, far gone on pleasure, breathing heavily through his nose as Loki guided his body into a riding rhythm.

“Mmm, you look ravishing,” Loki murmured, his fingers still plucking at Thor’s sore, sensitive nipples, every touch making his cock dribble and his ass clench. 

“I wish you could see yourself right now,” Loki said. “Wouldn’t you like that? To see how desperate and ready you are to debase yourself for cock?”

Thor breathed in sharply, uncertainly.

“Look at yourself, brother.”

At Loki’s words, Thor’s blindfold fell from his face, and he stared at the mirror that had materialized in front of him. 

He blinked away his tears, vision coming to focus after a moment. 

Loki’s hand was in his hair, stroking gently. 

“What do you see?” Loki asked.

Thor looked up, his heart pounding. What did he see?

He saw himself. 

A scarred body, gone to seed. A broken man, who had terrorized and rampaged across the universe for years. A dirty, filthy harlot, who took pleasure from being tied up and humiliated and used. 

He closed his eyes and turned his head. 

“No,” Loki said. His hand gripped Thor’s chin and turned it back to the mirror. 

“Do you want to know what I see, Thor?” 

Thor’s heart clenched. 

What did Loki see? Did he see what Thor saw? What everyone else saw? 

“I see my brother,” Loki murmured, and his lips were on Thor’s neck, gentle. “I see a man who has fought hard, and lost much. I see a man whose goodness is unmatched in all of the Nine Realms, and beyond.

I see you Thor. And I see a man worthy of forgiveness. Of being saved.

A man worthy of my heart.”

Thor’s vision blurred with tears. He heaved in a breath through his nose, blindy tucking his face against any part of Loki he could touch.

Loki laughed, “Enough of that now, love. I think we were in the middle of something.”

Then the blindfold was back on, and Loki pushed Thor on his hands and knees. 

“Fuck yourself on my cock,” Loki said, and Thor obeyed. 

It should have been humiliating—he knew how he must look, sloppily thrusting backwards and moaning helplessly every time Loki’s cock bottomed out inside him. 

But there was no humiliation here, not with the words Loki spoke to him.

“Good,” Loki crooned, murmuring praise: Thor was good, Thor was beautiful, Thor was loved. It was only Loki he could hear, only Loki’s voice in his head, only Loki. 

When Thor came, it was secondary only to the feeling of Loki holding him, buoying him as he lost himself, Loki filling him with come, claiming Thor as his own. 

Slowly, sensation returned: the blindfold was untied, sound filtered back into his ears, and Loki unclasped the gag from his mouth, massaging Thor’s sore jaw. The ropes fell away as soon as Loki touched them, and then Thor was being settled on the bed. 

“Thank you,” Thor slurred, exhaustion stealing his vowels. Loki puttered around as Thor dozed, fixing the sheets, cleaning him, tucking him in. All things that could be handled by seidr, but Loki liked the physicality of it. So did Thor. 

Loki spooned up behind him, a cool brand as the days of summer waxed, heavy and golden.

Blindly, Thor reached behind him, and Loki laced their hands together, laying them both upon Thor’s thigh. 

“Sleep,” Loki said, and said the words he had said every day since he and Thor had reunited, and would never tire of saying: “I’ll be here when you wake.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This fic is finished. Next chapters will go up as they're beta'd. 
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic and wanna hang, catch me on twitter @sendaraven :D I love making friends.


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